O What a Nobel Mind is Here O'erthrown

The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword,
Th' expectation and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
Th' observ'd of all observers, quite, quite down

Safety Word?

I've recently read some very good advice:

"Always have a safety word installed with your loved ones, in the event that an evil doppleganger from another universe tries to take your place."

- The Mad Typist

I am known for taking precautions to reduce risk.

Assuming that evil dopplegangers will be waaayyy to busy to read through my meandering with poppets the safety word is "Renoir".

If I can't explain why - then it's a doppleganger who was smart enough to find and figure out the blog.

If I explain why and it still sounds fishy - check with the inhabitants of the House. They'll know.

But I wonder sometimes - why is it always the doppleganger that's evil, what if I'm evil and the doppleganger is good?

What if the doppleganger and I are both neutral?

Maybe we should both sit down for tea and discuss this . . . . I'll bake scones.

(Hmmmn . . . . . if it doesn't bake, it's definitely evil, and definitely a doppleganger . . . . forget the safety word - safety word plus Bake-off!)

How Bizarre

Every time I look around . . .

Well actually, it seems my last post was the 100th post. That's fitting somehow.

It also reminds me that I promised the blog the rest of The Taunting 09, which I will do - I promise - later this week because I need deadlines, no matter what else happens. Deadlines keep me safe.

But the real purpose of the blog was so that when I went to ground, I would still be communicating somehow. And I haven't been, which means it's important to make sure to post.

I've been anticipating these last 12 days for some time. Preparing for them, analyzing my possible responses.

I predicted that I would most likely be kind of shell shocked - not by circumstances, but sheer physicality. You can't keep going like I was without a cost. There was a cost.

I had scheduled it even - I told everyone that I would most likely need a week just to recover from the half decade before. I was sort of immobile last week, and very busy. I knew that I would be. I budgeted a week, but I was still upset with myself for that level of inertia, it feels like a lack of discipline.

I am mad at myself for being right. How annoying is that?

But this is the week that I expected to start the rebuilding - and of course I am now sick - which I also predicted but was hoping to avoid.

I'm being careful. I'm spending my time in chairs, not beds. I'm making sure I stay in sunlit rooms (I have been out of natural sunlight during the day for almost five years)

Still, it's scary not to have any energy, and terrifying not to be able to focus right now. But I counsel others to be patient with themselves, I need to be realistic as well.

I'm just not sure what realistic expectations are - I am coming to terms with the many, many compromises I made where I was last, and I know I need to do the mental accounting before I find the next job with the compromises that will need to be made there. Wherever there is.

Whatever there does.

So I have read a book or two, about magicians and what happens to you when you grow up. And I have watched a movie or two, about what you need to do when you have to react to the circumstances instead of your plan. And I caught up on the full run of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse, - which is about identity and what happens when you think you are doing something for the right reasons, or neutral ones and how many ways you can be wrong.

These were the books. They were important last week. I don't know if they'll be important forever:

The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia

The Magicians

The movies were Sherlock Holmes, Princess and the Frog, and Avatar.

I helped with costuming for the show I'm choosing not to be in.

I went to a Steampunk gathering called Clockwork and inspired a song called "Hello to Whiskey"

I worried over one of my children.

I called in to help the office I have left behind, one last time.

I filled out forms, paid bills, calculated costs, cooked, posted on the Embarrassed Embassy Forum.

But the things I haven't done are weighing heavier. I am very much feeling the effects of gravity.

I'm not sure what I should expect from myself. I am also sure that I am quite annoyed with gravity.

And the weather- which is just as useless a thing to be angry at as gravity.

And I'm not really fond of microbes that cause ear infections.

So I'm here and it seems, slightly broken, but probably still good.

Entropy and the Landscapers

I am overwhelmed by what I do not know.

Sometimes in the most literal sense. 

  

As of this morning you could not see this path. It is a path I am responsible for, yet here you can see it and this morning you could not. This picture was not so very long ago. Two Moons and fifteen thunderstorms ago. It has been overgrown by Mountain Laurel, in the blink of rain soaked eye.

What I did not know about growth overtook me even as I took joy in the entropy of irises.

* 

If I am not careful my planned entropy will overwhelm my order, and then there will be no irisies, entropic or otherwise. 

I grew up around concrete. There were trees that were placed to perfection every 500 feet where you walked carefully and avoided stepping on cracks out of respect for your mother's bodily integrity. But growth is ordered to it's own plan, and so concrete met entropy when I was young and roots raised the concrete and branches brushed the buildings. The trees were stronger than the sidewalk.

Inexorable branches and roots claiming my city. Declaring that some day there will only be brownstones and trees, and if you let them, the trees will claim dominance. You only get to have order if you maintain it. If you want to maintain it, then you need to know the nature of both trees and concrete.

I know concrete well. Trees and grass and flowers, I love them but still do not know their nature outside of books. 

* 

It would be lovely to be the kind of person who breathes with the grass and the flowers and the cycle of seasons.

But I am not that person and I am not willing to be the person who does only what's needed. I know the concrete and I know it's relation to the trees. Out of respect for both, and the desire for beauty, I did what I do know best, and called the people who love green things and know their souls. 

They've been here before and helped me take a step closer to knowing, but I lost the path. 

It was covered in ways I never expected were possible. The Foreman will bring my path back and try to teach me not to lose it. It's not a battle you know, it's a dance. 

I was in over my head I had to call in a Dancemaster.

-

I'll have my flowers and my bricks all balanced out soon.  The Foreman will help me keep the entropy in check. I wish I were the kind of person that didn't need him, but he loves the plants with his whole being. I can see it when we talk about them, when we walk around the house address each one and it's place at the House. At least I am kind of person that makes sure to bring someone like him to the Ball.

Maybe he'll teach me some more and next year I'll need him a little bit less, but this year he is a gift to the things that grow around the House and therefore a gift to those that grow inside.